Advance ticket sales are closed, but tickets will be available at the door ($10 per person).

The HS/HSV Symphony Guild is delighted to present "Neil Rutman in Concert" as part of our new Classic Series. The concert will be on Sunday, February 5, 2023 at 3 pm at Presbyterian Kirk in the PInes and will be followed by a meet and greet reception. General admission tickets are $10 and can be purchased in advance on the Guild website, www.symphonyguild.org or can be purchased at the door.

Mr. Rutman is a renowned pianist who is currently Artist-in-Residence at the University of Central Arkansas. He has performed in over thirty countries and has appeared in many outstanding venues here in the USA including Carnegie Hall. He has distinguished himself as a top prize winner in several international competitions and has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The concert will include the three works described below.

Goldberg Variations, BWV 988

The Goldberg Variations is a monumental work and one of Sebastian Bach's finest creations.  The variations are based on a beautiful Aria with which the work begins and ends, and utilize all the contrapuntal techniques brilliantly applied by Bach. Because it was written for a harpsichord with two keyboards there are occasional technical gymnastics with hands continually crossing over each other, which is necessary on the one keyboard modern piano.

The Story of Babar the Little Elephant

One day in 1943 in France, while Poulenc was practicing the piano at the home of his brother, his little nieces and nephews came up to the piano and said "Uncle Francis, what you are practicing is very boring. Practice this". At that point they put on the music rack the newly published children's storybook, ‘Babar the Elephant', with all of its iconic illustrations. To please his nieces and nephews Poulenc began to improvise on the photos and story, and this was the genesis of this much beloved work.

Ballade no. 1 in g minor, Op. 23

Chopin wrote the Ballade no. 1 op. 23 in 1835, shortly after he had arrived in Paris. While the Ballades are pure music without any programmatic illusions they are also loosely inspired by four poems by Adam Mickiewic. The poem which is associated with the Ballade no. 1 tells of a Lithuanian nobleman recounting a sad story of travels and victories in military battles. At the end of the story he twice challenges his invited guests to defy him, and if they do so they will suffer the same fate as his vanquished enemies in battle.  The music of Chopin is only loosely connected with this story of Mickiewicz and covers a wide variety of emotions from the tragic, the agitated, the romantic, to the virtuosic.